Instagram changed its terms of use to instantly grant itself the rights to the photos its users upload to the site.

Instagram, the popular service for sharing and filtering photos shot on phones, has now released changes to its Terms of Use, which will go into effect on Jan. 16, 2013 for all users. “Our community has grown a lot since we wrote our original terms of service. To get things up to date for the millions of people now using Instagram, we’re bringing you new versions of our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service,” Instagram wrote on its blog.

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“Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service,” it said. “Instead, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service, except that you can control who can view certain of your Content and activities on the Service as described in the Service’s Privacy Policy, available here: http://instagram.com/legal/privacy/.”

The legalese goes on. “Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.” (You can read the full Terms of Service here.)

If you read that carefully you’ll understand that Instagram doesn’t “own” your content, but it can license your photos to other companies. If it wanted, it says in effect, it could sell your photos to advertisers or other firms.

How nice. And that’s not the end of it, as Instagram now says that its users agree “that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.”

So, basically, Instagram can decide to make a profit while it ruins your life, if you happen to have uploaded anything questionable to the site. And what partying person under a certain age who has always lived with a phone capable of taking and uploading photos at any time hasn’t done that?

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

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1.
Anonymous

If I was a man of money I’d pay $10,000 for any embarassing photo of an Instagram employee as a way to encourage them to rethink this idea. Unfortunately, I’m not a man of money, though one can hope.

I don’t see why this surprises anyone. All of the big “free” internet services have been quietly moving towards proprietary nonexclusive ownership/control, contractually agreed to and, hence, outside of copyright protection.

If you’re a fish and see a “free” worm, it’s probably got a hook in it. If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product. And you never find the red card at the three-card monte table.

Google tried this a few years ago when they first released their Chrome browser. Their end user agreement (that most people never read) contained language to the effect that Google claimed ownership of anything you viewed with their browser. For that reason, we were told by our IT and legal departments to never load Chrome on our work computers. Under the user agreement, Google could claim ownership of proprietary information on our intranet. It’s possible they’ve removed the offending language since then. I honestly don’t know.

I think that the future is scary if companies continue this way. A lot of questions need to be asked about the long term intentions of things like this. Read my less serious thoughts on the issue over on my blog http://www.irkitated.blogspot.com.au

Here’s the solution: folks with an instagram account should load up their accounts with copyrighted material. Think big: material from news outlets, their photos, pictures of them and their families, their homes, screen shots of their photographs and from videos; material from the entertainment world – entertainers themselves, their work, their concerts, their movies, of them, their homes, families, children, and pets; pictures from real estate companies; pictures of already copyrighted material such as album, book, and disc covers; photos from non-profits and their products; photos of logos – everyone’s, business, government, entertainment; and last; photos of everyday government products and material from all levels of government. The sources are everywhere; photos of already mentioned material and subjects plus screen shots.

It’s time to turn the tables on organizations – private (corporate), public, and government – who use massive amounts of our private and personal collected material and data for themselves by loading up their systems with junk data. It can be done. It’s time for a few geeks and saavy computer folks to step up and put out some instructions and perhaps a bit of code that anyone can have at their fingertips to use against a site that uses and misuses information they’ve collected. The folks collecting the data and information are the ones who should be signing license agreements, not the other way around. Let’s poison and crap up their data bases and systems. Whaddaya say, how about a little initiative?

1) A social-media user who uploads someone else’s copyrighted material without permission, as you suggest, makes him- or herself liable for infringement—not the service provider. The law is drafted to regard the service provider as a common carrier; just as UPS is not liable for drug-dealing because some customer ships a kilo of cocaine via UPS, the service provider is not liable if an infringer uploads infringing material.

2) All of the personal image material that Instagram (or any other social media) users upload is already copyrighted; copyright vests automatically in a work at the moment it is fixed in tangible form. That copyright, however, is not enforceable unless it has been registered with the Copyright Office, which is one of the reasons why most copyright infringements remain unaddressed.

3) The users of these services have agreed to the terms of service—whether they’ve read them or not, whether they are aware of the implications or not. That means that they’ve given their consent, contractually, to the server using the material they provide.

To some extent, any service provider has to have the non-exclusive right to reproduce, display, and distribute user material—otherwise, the service provider cannot provide the service. Every time someone loads or refreshes a page on their computer, the subscriber’s content is being reproduced, displayed, and distributed. Where the problem arises is with the service provider unilaterally claiming the “right” to sell, license, sub-license, or distribute the material to third parties for their use in exchange for compensation, without anything more than the pro forma consent of the subscriber.